In previous versions of CDP, your choice of weights and scales uniquely
determined a set of tradeoffs and CDP represented these tradeoffs to you. The
philosophy was that Tradeoff values gave numbers you could compare against
standards you care about, such as, industry standards, historical norms, etc.
Such comparisons would allow you and your fellow decision makers to validate
(or invalidate) your preference weights.

In CDP 3.0 you can now directly set the values for tradeoffs. Based on these
values and the scales you have defined, CDP calculates the equivalent weights.
It does this whether the model is a single layer model or a more complex
multi-layer model. When first building a model, begin with the weights
technique to capture preferences in the hierarchy, and, as the tradeoffs become
apparent, switch to the tradeoffs technique to fine-tune your decision.

Models whose Hierarchy Method was set to Weights (e.g., all CDP Version 2.0
Models), and which were completely rated, will have their weight values
converted to tradeoffs if the user changes the Hierarchy (rating) Method to
Tradeoffs. Conversely, setting the Hierarchy Method to Weights will convert the
tradeoffs back to weights. So, you can start with a weights approach, develop
your scales and preferences, then, as you feel you are beginning to understand
the key tradeoffs involved, edit those tradeoff values directly.

New Alternatives Scatter Plot

CDP 3.0 introduces the Alternatives Scatter Plot analysis feature. This plot
helps you understand how your alternatives are distributed relative to their
scores on the various lowest criteria. In addition, it also shows how the
scatter of alternatives correlates with high decision scores.

Alternatively, you can see how the decision contours are driven by particular
lowest criteria:

It is clear in the above example that all the alternatives (from the PROJECT by
Tradeoffs.CDP sample model), are very close when the two most important
criteria in the model, Revenues and Costs, are taken together.

Extension of Contributions to Criteria Analysis

CDP 3.0 extends the Contributions by Criteria analysis to include other views
that let you further examine the key characteristics of your decision. In
addition to the original stacked bar chart, radar and repeated pie charts are
now available.

Radar graphs

In the above Radar graph it is clear that the alternative Major Product
represents different value proposition than all the other alternatives. It is
stronger than all other alternatives in terms of Revenues, Staff Interest and
Corporate Goals but weaker than all other alternatives across all other
Criteria.

Pie Graphs

Exporting Graphs as metafiles

These new graphs are powered by CDP 3.0's new graphics engine. With this engine,
many of CDP 3.0ís anlyses (including the hierarchy structure itself) are
exported as metafiles, so you can copy them into other Windows applications
such as Microsoft Word.

Extensive Application Options available

In version 3.0 you can set a broad range of options governing everything from
your default rating scales to how closely the blocks in the Hierarchy are
drawn. This flexibility allows you to set defaults that makes CDP conform
exactly to your process of decision-making.